Wednesday, 13 May 2015

Writing: Conventicle, Chapter Six

“Mare!”
Aldous jerked awake, startled to find herself in an unfamiliar place. It took
her a few moments to place herself, the strange bed with its strange smell. But
Cressus asleep beside her felt anything but strange. She watched him in the
half-light, steadying her thoughts. It had been an unsettling dream. Weiss,
falling down a steep slope on a backdrop of fire, and it had been her hands
that pushed him down, and yet as he fell, instead of the dark, angry red
swallowing him, golden light swept up from the valley and welcomed him. She had
tried to call after him, but she felt her feet planted, her back suddenly bowed
by the weight that she had borne on her back since the day she was born. No
words had come.

“Just a
dream,” she told herself, but she was worried about Weiss. Cressus had promised
that Terrick would talk Weiss home, but after all, the Blind Eye was known for
their kills, not their diplomacy.

Aldous’
stirring woke Cressus, slowly, and he cupped her face in his broad hand, and
said, “It’s early.”

“I had a
dream,” she said.

“Tell me,”
he said, and as he lay on his back, listening in that deep way no one ever had
before, Aldous told him.

“It is not
your hands hurting Weiss,” said Cressus when she was done. “You’re trying to
help him.”

Aldous
nodded and tried not to wonder if it were true.

“Who is
Mare?” added Cressus after a moment.

“I don’t
know,” she replied. “It was just what he said as he was falling.”

#

She came
running up the path, breathing hard, her face set, her red dress a banner. She
clutched a staff of wood as she ran.

“You shall
not have him!” she cried, and Terrick spun to face her. The triumph that died
on his face at her cry flared up again when he saw her slight figure. Even to
Weiss, her long black braid tossed by her steps looked ridiculously childlike
as she ran, but her dress was a banner, her mouth, her eyes, and he struggled
up the slope even as the weeds and saplings he tried to anchor himself with
came up by the roots in his hands.

“Mare!” he
said, but she did not slow or look at him. She sprang at Terrick with the staff
already a blur. Terrick whipped a short sword out of a sheath at his thigh and
Weiss’s world seemed to distill down to the racket of wood against metal. His
Deedsweight pulled him down and pulled him down but he pulled up to level
ground and felt for his own long knife when the sound changed to that of wood
against flesh and bone, a dull thud, and Terrick fell. Weiss was in time to put
the knife at his throat as Mare kicked away his sword. With her staff braced
against his chest she said again, with a fierce joy, “You shall not have him.”

“Check his
arm,” she told Weiss, nodding at Terrick’s left arm, and Weiss pushed up the
sleeve to reveal a blind eye slashed top to bottom picked out in black ink on
the skin of his forearm.

“Oh,” said
Weiss in a small voice, and then he was angry.

“What is
this place?” he demanded of Terrick, but it was Mare who answered.

“Tirsin,”
she said. “Oh, Weiss, I told you to make for the pass in the mountains; how
came you to be here?” Her face was no longer a banner, but a cold rain.

“He told me
it was a safe way,” said Weiss. He was afraid again, suddenly; he knew not why,
but that there was something dark and brooding lurking in the fire beyond the
mountain.

“A safe
way? Tirsin? There is naught but death here!”

“Aye, death
and woe aplenty,” sneered Terrick suddenly. “But I’d ha’ brought you back to
your sister safe and sound alright if not for this bloody Thron’s interference.
It’s only them that won’t see reason nor surrender in a fight that I give to
the Lady,” and he cast a significant backwards glance towards the fiery
mountaintop.

“’The
Lady’? I don’t understand.”

“Let us
deal with this man first,” said Mare, “and get away from Her, and then I will
tell you.”

#

“She is
old, very old,” said Mare, “and very hungry.” Terrick was tied to a tree. Mare
had explained conscientiously that he would not be left there long—the Blind
Eye would be sure to follow his trail when he did not return to the city. “So
he won’t,” she had said, “die of exposure or hunger here.” Weiss would’ve
muttered something to the effect of ‘better if he did’ but Mare’s voice leaned
shame on his.

Now,
looking back to the mountain, Mare told him of Tirsin, the name of the mountain
and the name of she who lived inside the mountain, which in the old tongue
meant ‘Weight’. She was a dragon of the old kind, wingless and blind, stirring
up the stones, humming with fire. An open maw, waiting for souls to stumble in,
or be stumbled. All this Mare explained in a few vivid strokes that left Weiss
breathless with his narrow escape, and trembling with his weariness.

“But how
did you find me?” he asked then.

“Though
Aiken may be full of people who wish you off your path,” said Mare, “Elionae’s
wish is for you to go on, and he is not easily gainsaid. I chanced to see you
as I was leaving the village, up on the ridge as you followed that man.” And ran all the way up, thought Weiss,
disgusted with himself. He was weary and weak, but Mare had seemed strong
before. Now she, too, walked with a leaden step, and there was a long, shallow
cut along her arm. She would not let Weiss look at it.

“The Blind
Eye are tailing us now. I have one more village to go to, and I cannot stop.
When I am safe in the stronghold they will treat it; it isn’t deep. As for you,
make all speed for the pass, and beyond it—“ she pointed to his map markedly,
that, he supposed, he might not yet again part from the way—“Caethron.”

#

Aldous
passed the afternoon peacefully in Cressus’ room at the Ravenshead Inn. The
noises of the Racketeer’s Quarter—horses, bartering, coming-and-goings—were
very different from the noises of the Queen’s Quarter where Aldous lived, where
quiet murmurs prevailed, punctuated only by the marching boots of the
Geridspolice.

She had
spent the afternoon copying leaflets for Cressus in her precise, sloping hand.
It pleased her that there was something she could do for him, so much so that
she did not take much notice of the words she was copying. Precise, sloping
hateful words about the Throns, precise, sloping sneers at the Queen, at the
police for their lack of action. She savoured the rhythm of the quill and the
ink and the scratch on the paper, and as dusk began to settle, Cressus came in
and kissed her shoulder. He pulled her upright as she turned to kiss his mouth,
and for a moment she was lost in that tangle, but then he said abruptly,

“Terrick
hasn’t returned.”

“Weiss
wouldn’t…” she said at once, and then stopped because she didn’t, after all,
really know what Weiss would or wouldn’t do. Brother and stranger. “So what
happens next?” she said instead.

“Vana and I
will go find him and see what’s happened.”“Why Vana?” It had come out as
more of a whine than she'd intended, but she didn’t trust Vana.

“Because if
Weiss did overpower Terrick, he may not have been alone. I’ll be with her,”
said Cressus, lifting Aldous’ chin to meet her eyes. “I won’t let her hurt
him.”

“Very
well,” replied Aldous. His eyes on hers had bloomed a sudden purpose in her
chest. “But I will be with you as well.”

And so it
was that she found herself on horseback, with a black cloak and knife in her
belt, riding between Vana and Cressus out into the marshes that rustled their dark
secrets under the arch of the stars.